Building on the successful deployment of results-reporting interfaces with Data Express, Forward Advantage and MEDITECH have expanded the Data Express offering to include electronic orders from physician practices to a hospital’s MEDITECH HCIS.

By adopting MEDITECH’s new streamlined orders model and Forward Advantage’s Data Express product, hospitals will benefit from a cost-effective and rapidly deployed solution for receiving orders from physician practices and communicating results to practices. Physicians will benefit from being able to view the results for these orders directly in their ambulatory EMRs.

“Hospitals are looking for a MEDITECH-endorsed solution that allows physicians to send electronic orders directly from their ambulatory EMRs and allows the hospital to provide services comparable to commercial reference labs in their communities,” says Chris Roggenstein, CEO of Forward Advantage. “Data Express combined with MEDITECH’s streamlined orders model provides the right functionality to meet hospitals’ needs and their physicians’ needs cost-effectively.”

Data Express employs a “one-to-many” HL7 communication model developed with MEDITECH which enables customers using MEDITECH’s MAGIC and Client/Server HCIS platforms to exchange outbound data with physician practices that are operating a variety of ambulatory vendors’ EMR products.

Now, MAGIC and Client/Server customers have the ability to receive orders originating from physician practices into MEDITECH in order to manage medical record numbers to avoid duplications and provide separate storage of ambulatory and hospital orders for easy processing. A collaborative effort between MEDITECH and Forward Advantage, this new offering provides hospitals with a solid solution tailored to the specific needs of MEDITECH users.

The streamlined orders model used in combination with Data Express provides many key distinctions over other interfaces available for processing orders from physician practices, including:

• A Hold Queue within MEDITECH’s Order Entry solution for temporary storage of orders until a patient arrives at the hospital, with the ability to hold an order with only a medical record number. (The account is created when a patient arrives)

• Smart search capabilities to avoid duplicate medical record numbers

• An Order Entry interface filer program, and a modification to MEDITECH’s existing inbound orders interface, to store orders from physician practices separately from orders which originate in the hospital until patients present at the hospital.

“The strong working relationship between MEDITECH and Forward Advantage provides a collaborative environment in which the product is deployed rapidly, traditional implementation fees are avoided, and product updates and enhancements are made quickly and efficiently,” says Pamela Sanford, Client/Server and MAGIC interoperability manager for MEDITECH.

“We are very excited about the streamlined orders functionality and the positive impact to both the physicians’ and the hospitals’ workflow. We are pleased to assist hospitals in reaching their interoperability goals with the Data Express solution.”